


The game was ne’er so fair (and I am done)

by privatesnarker



Series: Everybody [Spoiler] Verse [2]
Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Conspiracy, Family Secrets, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1773838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/privatesnarker/pseuds/privatesnarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Attending the Capulet ball uninvited was all Mercutio’s idea. That’s the worst part really, that amidst all the careful lies and secrets Escalus has woven around their lives, it’s his own spur-of-the-moment decision, together with sheer bloody chance, that brings about the end. He had vague intentions of distracting Romeo from his melancholy, goading Tybalt, maybe picking up one or two of the younger Capulets under their watchful cousin’s nose and adding another story to the tales of his notoriety. But then he sees Romeo across the room, talking to Lord Capulet’s daughter (of all people!), sees their faces, and it’s over. His head might be telling him to be rational and wait, but his gut knows it’s time to talk to Escalus about Valentine.</i>
</p>
<p>Mercutio's fate is shaped by his brother's shadow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The game was ne’er so fair (and I am done)

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently, when I say I don’t feel like writing more of a verse where my favourite character is dead, what I mean is “gimme 24 hours and I will write ALL THE ANGST”. This is basically _Everybody [Spoiler], The Mercutio Angst Remix_.

Attending the Capulet ball uninvited was all Mercutio’s idea. That’s the worst part really, that amidst all the careful lies and secrets Escalus has woven around their lives, it’s his own spur-of-the-moment decision, together with sheer bloody chance, that brings about the end. He had vague intentions of distracting Romeo from his melancholy, goading Tybalt, maybe picking up one or two of the younger Capulets under their watchful cousin’s nose and adding another story to the tales of his notoriety. But then he sees Romeo across the room, talking to Lord Capulet’s daughter (of all people!), sees their faces, and it’s over. His head might be telling him to be rational and wait, but his gut knows it’s time to talk to Escalus about Valentine.

****

As soon as Mercutio is able to walk unassisted, he regularly escapes his nurse to go looking for his brother. He doesn’t know who first told him that he has an older brother named Valentine who will one day be Prince of Verona; he has always known it, like his own name. Does his brother not want to see him? He must be terribly busy with his studies. Mercutio is only a second son, and he spends many hours each day with his tutors. For Valentine it must be even worse! Still, Mercutio is determined to find him. He isn’t sure if a brother is more like a friend or more like a father or something different altogether, but he could do with any of those. For years and years he searches every room in the palace, but Valentine is nowhere to be found.

Later he becomes convinced that Valentine must move to a different room every night while everyone sleeps, and even risks punishment by walking the palace after lights out, to no avail. If Valentine was half as determined to see him as he is to see Valentine, surely he would have escaped his tutors by now and come to see him? The thought smarts, but then again, Valentine is much older than him, a grownup by now, and grownups do not need children, merely tolerate them. Maybe when he is older, Valentine will come looking for his company.

As he grows older, and more jaded, the possibility of Valentine ever reaching out to him seems to become more remote with each passing day. He is nowhere in the palace, so he must be hidden somewhere in the city. Why? The palace is guarded well enough, but there are a hundred curious eyes and gossiping mouths. There must be something wrong with him that the citizens are not supposed to know. Maybe he is sick. Maybe he is mad. Mercutio hopes it’s the latter, since he’s heard madness runs in families, and he isn’t always sure what his head is telling him is right. If Valentine is still to be Prince of Verona one day, he must have his wits about him at least some of the time, and they could- they could talk, and Valentine would understand. They would be alike, closer than friends, supporting each other for the rest of their lives. He’s asked Escalus, of course, he’s asked a hundred times in a variety of ways, but got absolutely no answer except “when you’re older”. So as he wanders the streets of Verona, steadily expanding his reputation at the same time as his scope of action, he keeps an eye on the windows and half-open doors, hoping to catch a face looking out, a shock of reddish hair maybe or eyes like his own, familiarity in the unknown.

****

The Prince keeps his word and eventually tells Mercutio about Valentine, after swearing him to absolute secrecy. At fifteen, Mercutio is too old to cry, especially for the sake of a person he never knew. He feels foolish for it, that night in his room, but the sudden realization that he never was a second son at all, always an only child, makes the walls move in and the darkness expand and then he has to muffle his sobs in his pillow.

It’s only later, on the verge of falling asleep, that the real meaning of Escalus’ words hits him. All the lessons, the endless talk about philosophy and politics, far too much precious knowledge for a second son. But for an eldest? For a future ruler. He doesn’t sleep any more that night – it’s easy to cry oneself to sleep, but anger is a bad bedfellow. He leaves the palace at first dawn, determined to stir up as much trouble as the time of day allows.

He still finds himself peering into windows out of habit.

****

After the ball, Romeo is nowhere to be found. Mercutio sees Benvolio off with a promise of retrieving their friend, then goes prowling through the old orchard of dead trees around the Capulet mansion. He finds Romeo, and wishes he hadn’t. It’s not simply the jealousy and sense of betrayal, but the feeling of fate pointing a finger and indicating the direction in which things must go. The time of freedom is coming to an end.

Escalus listens intently to his account before calling in Friar Laurence. Plans are hatched, ideas thrown back and forth. Romeo and Juliet could be the straw to break the camel’s back and make the simmering feud boil over, but they also could be the shock that makes everyone wake up. The friar will have to talk to them both, make them see the greater good. Valentine is never mentioned, but Mercutio knows his time has come. If two people are going to die, what’s a third one?

****

At seventeen, Mercutio has crafted himself a reputation as the city’s premier troublemaker, scoundrel and libertine. He has also found friends, and their company is almost enough to make him forget his resentment and anger for a little while. He’s cautiously hopeful. No one in their right mind would want him to be Verona’s next Prince. They’ll have to find someone else.

That is when Escalus summons him to the palace to tell him about the spare ID. He explains the need for an emergency out, the opportunity to reinvent oneself and leave all bad habits and worse reputation behind. A ruler, he says, must be untouchable. More than just human, a symbol to his people. Playing around is alright when one is young, but with maturity will come responsibility. Besides, Central Government likes to have a say in the appointment of rulers of backwater trade planets like Verona – not too adventurous, not too quarrelsome. Valentine will become Prince, and he will do a good job of it. It’s only a matter of time, and finding the right occasion.

Mercutio leaves the palace for the darkest, grimiest corners of the city, where Romeo and Benvolio would never dare look for him, and drowns himself in all the vices money and charm can buy. At the crack of dawn, in some derelict back alley, he is gripped by maniacal laughter and shook until he cries. No matter how dirty he gets, it will never be dirty enough. When the time is right, all his sins will be washed from him along with his name, he will be reborn for his purpose. Escalus knows Mercutio would never leave Verona behind, she is his mother as much as his mistress. Time is running out.

****

Mercutio wakes up in one of the palace’s rooms, the blood washed away and some food and wine left on a tray. Officially, he is dead, and when he leaves the room it will be as a different person. But what sort of person will that be? Who is Valentine?

He paces the room, still feeling clammy and unsteady on his feet from the poison. He wishes his friends were with him, he wishes he knew that everything went fine. Communication from Mantua is slow and unreliable in any case, but Romeo, Juliet and Tybalt are trying to remain undercover for the coming weeks, until the frenzy has died down. Benvolio has a mourning family to support, and no business being in the palace, since him and Valentine have never met.

What sort of person is Valentine going to be? How does one act as a symbol to the people? A symbol who never left his hiding hole until after the feud had ended. A symbol who did not attend his own brother’s funeral. His brother, whom he never acknowledged with a single word, a letter, a look. A selfish, spineless coward. Is this who he’s going to be from now on?

There’s a stack of documents waiting for him on the desk. There will be an advisor with him every day starting tomorrow, to explain their meaning and Valentine’s duties. Mercutio has never been an avid reader – before he escaped his tutors, they would read to him and then discuss the contents of the texts, having given up on his abysmal left-handed scrawl and snail-pace labouring over books. When he opens one of the files now, he finds that nothing has changed: the words refuse to stay put on their thin plastic sheets (paper is a luxury even the Prince can’t afford), the sentences stubbornly withhold their meaning, and his mind races forwards and backwards impatiently, jumping between past, present and future over a million and one topics. He pushes the stack over, and it falls to the floor in a satisfying flutter of leaves. What sort of man would rather read about a city – his city! – in dead words on dead plastic, when all her heart and soul are lying just beyond his doorstep?

Days go by, maybe a week, maybe two. Time seems to stand still in his prison room, with the meals and the advisor’s visits blending into one another. The numbness never quite leaves his legs. The palace physician diagnoses nerve damage, and the worry for Romeo’s wellbeing grows from a whisper to a constant screaming in the back of his mind. He has taken to drinking wine to help him sleep after a long day of doing nothing at all. He misses his friends more than he ever expected he would. Valentine’s shoulders slump of their own accord now, his voice quiet, his face a stony mask. His gait has become slow and shuffling, feet weighed down by invisible bonds. A man who has given up on almost everything, tired and resigned from years of illness. A man with an entire city on his shoulders. Valentine is who he needs to be, doing his job so that Mercutio may see his friends again. At night he dreams of his body becoming a city, people busily traveling the streets that are his veins. He looks for Romeo, looks for Benvolio, looks for Mercutio’s bright hair, but they’re nowhere to be found.

Eventually it starts coming together. Valentine’s whole demeanor is quiet and thoughtful, he thinks more than he says and does not like to be noticed. He’s cautious, maybe to a fault, but he’d rather keep people waiting than risk a hasty decision. He likes people, loves his city, but he cares from a distance, like a falconer observing his charge’s flight. In his dreams Mercutio the child is running through the palace after his brother, whose long legs make up for his slow amble. Mercutio covers the last steps in a running leap and clings to his brother’s thigh. He is patted on the head, picked up and carried onwards. It is a good dream, and only after waking up does he remember Mercutio and Valentine are the same person. The idea does not seem so daunting anymore.

****

Convincing Romeo and Juliet of the plan is no big challenge for the friar, especially backed by the Prince’s benevolent but firm recommendation, and Benvolio of course is with them from the start. Juliet looks forward to their wedding, while Romeo smiles at her giddily, in between instructing Benvolio to take good care of his mother. But for the duel to work, they need Tybalt in the boat as well.

He listens with a furrowed brow to the story he will have to support – him challenging Romeo to a duel, Mercutio trying to intervene, Romeo accidentally killing his friend and fleeing in terror – then shakes his head. “If she leaves, I leave.” He is not to be dissuaded, so in the end they have to plan for four deaths instead of three.

****

Valentine stands in front of the closed doors to the conference room, before his first ever public appearance. He fiddles with the sleeves of his loose dark robe, runs a nervous hand through his long dyed hair. He hasn’t been in a room full of people in weeks – no, scratch that, Valentine has never been in a room with this many people. Of course he has made enquiries after everyone present, he is nothing if not thorough. He has read most of the relevant documents himself (Mercutio is getting better at skimming texts for their meaning), and Escalus has assured him that he need not make a speech, just a few remarks to show his concern for the public welfare.

His mind refuses to stay focused on the here and now – only yesterday he’s had news from Romeo, enthusiastically telling of Mantua’s many attractions (none of which can compete with Juliet’s loveliness, of course) and assuring him of their wellbeing. Escalus has promised him monthly visits, with Benvolio accompanying him – they have already decided that Valentine and Benvolio will become fast friends, public opinion be damned. He snaps back to the present when his name is called and the doors start to open.

****

Mercutio spends the last minutes of his life in utter panic. They have to work quickly, while the square is still empty and the servants are shielding them from view, and all he can think of are the many things he never told Romeo. Benvolio gently pushes him down, helps arrange his limbs – the poison is setting in quickly, and they’re mostly numb already – and begins to cover him in fake blood. Mercutio tries to turn his head to where Romeo is doing the same for Tybalt, but his neck won’t move. He tries to tell Benvolio to tell Romeo, tell him he does not know what, good luck maybe, but his eyes won’t focus and his face is numb. The last thing he sees are Benvolio’s bloodied hands, before everything goes black.


End file.
